It is well known that on the Continent, whence our Norman nobles came, the bard who composed, the harper who played and sang, and even the dancer and the mimic, were all considered as of one community, and were even all included under the common name of Minstrels.[1048] I must therefore be allowed the same application of the term here without being expected to prove that every singer composed, or every composer chanted, his own song; much less that every one excelled in all the arts, which were occasionally exercised by some or other of this fraternity.
IV. After the Norman Conquest, the first occurrence which I have met with relating to this order of men is the founding of a priory and hospital by one of them: scil. the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, London, by Royer or Raherus, the King's Minstrel, in the third year of King Henry I. A.D. 1102. He was the first prior of his own establishment, and presided over it to the time of his death.[T2]
In the reign of K. Henry II. we have upon record the name of Galfrid or Jeffrey, a harper, who in 1180 received a corrody or annuity from the Abbey of Hide, near Winchester: and, as in the early times every harper was expected to sing, we cannot doubt but this reward was given to him for his music and his songs; which, if they were for the solace of the monks there, we may conclude would be in the English language.[U]
Under his romantic son, K. Richard I., the minstrel profession seems to have acquired additional splendor. Richard, who was the great hero of chivalry, was also the distinguished patron of poets and minstrels. He was himself of their number, and some of his poems are still extant.[1049] They were no less patronized by his favourites and chief officers. His Chancellor, William Bishop of Ely, is expressly mentioned to have invited singers and minstrels from France, whom he loaded with rewards; and they in return celebrated him as the most accomplished person in the world.[U2] This high distinction and regard, although confined, perhaps, in the first instance to poets and songsters of the French nation, must have had a tendency to do honour to poetry and song among all his subjects, and to encourage the cultivation of these arts among the natives, as the indulgent favour shewn by the monarch or his great courtiers to the Provençal Troubadour, or Norman Rymour, would naturally be imitated by their inferior vassals to the English gleeman or minstrel. At more than a century after the Conquest, the national distinctions must have begun to decline, and both the Norman and English languages would be heard in the houses of the great[U3]; so that probably about this æra, or soon after, we are to date that remarkable intercommunity and exchange of each other's compositions which we discover to have taken place at some early period between the French and English minstrels: the same set of phrases, the same species of characters, incidents, and adventures, and often the same identical stories being found in the old metrical romances of both nations.[V]
The distinguished service which Richard received from one of his own minstrels, in rescuing him from his cruel and tedious captivity, is a remarkable fact, which ought to be recorded for the honour of poets and their art. This fact I shall relate in the following words of an ancient writer.[1050]
"The Englishmen were more then a whole yeare, without hearing any tydings of their king, or in what place he was kept prisoner. He had trained up in his court a Rimer or Minstrill,[1051] called Blondell de Nesle: who (so saith the Manuscript of old Poesies,[1052] and an auncient manuscript French Chronicle) being so long without the sight of his lord, his life seemed wearisome to him, and he became confounded with melancholly. Knowne it was, that he came backe from the Holy Land: but none could tell in what countrey he arrived. Whereupon this Blondel, resolving to make search for him in many countries, but he would heare some newes of him; after expence of divers dayes in travaile, he came to a towne[1053] (by good hap) neere to the castell where his maister king Richard was kept. Of his host he demanded to whom the castell appertained, and the host told him, that it belonged to the duke of Austria. Then he enquired whether there were any prisoners therein detained or no: for alwayes he made such secret questionings wheresoever he came. And the hoste gave answer, there was one onely prisoner, but he knew not what he was, and yet he had bin detained there more then the space of a yeare. When Blondel heard this, he wrought such meanes, that he became acquainted with them of the castell, as Minstrels doe easily win acquaintance any where:[1054] but see the king he could not, neither understand that it was he. One day he sat directly before a window of the castell, where king Richard was kept prisoner, and began to sing a song in French, which king Richard and Blondel had sometime composed together. When king Richard heard the song, he knew it was Blondel that sung it: and when Blondel paused at halfe of the song, the king 'began the other half and completed it.'[1055] Thus Blondel won knowledge of the king his maister, and returning home into England, made the barons of the countrie acquainted where the king was." This happened about the year 1193.
The following old Provençal lines are given as the very original song:[1056] which I shall accompany with an imitation offered by Dr. Burney (ii. 237.)
BLONDEL.